Nigrescent
by Zal-ljy
Summary: He returned in their sophomore year in highschool, behind him is a grim past. Yet, she treated him normally despite that, and the possibility of him being a murderer. Will they lean to the light or tend to the black?


* * *

Within the four walls, there were those who knew of his past, and those who didn't

Within the four walls, there was only one other than himself that knew of his past. He introduced himself curtly, saying less than what had been asked of him. At the teacher's request, he sat himself by the window at the back of the classroom. He recognized the familiar face next to him; she wore a cloth headband that complemented her hair colour and had acknowledged his presence with a light nod and smile before facing the front of the classroom.

Frankly, he had expected her to look bashful or cast glances at his direction at the very minimum, but she had done no such a thing. He was surprised in fact, at how she had ignored him for the whole day and tried to do the same.

His prediction had been right.

* * *

Nigrescent, a Naruto fanfiction by Zal-ljy, concept devised by Masashi Kishimoto.

* * *

At first there were only a few girls crowding around his table, but humans being curious by nature, took little time before the boy was fully surrounded by people. Amidst the chatter, a random girl asked him where he had been before transferring to the town.

He looked up at the girl, looked away, and answered lifelessly.

"Hey wait! Aren't all the elite schools at Oto?! It's no wonder you managed to get into the top class!" Another girl exclaimed, evoking several gasps of awe around him.

"Eh, but I heard you used to stay in Konaha. So that means that you like…emigrated to Oto?"

There was a short silence before he affirmed the statement. Soon after, he was bombarded with many other questions, some of which had annoyed him.

"Then why did you choose to come back? It's weird transferring during the middle of January isn't it?"

He looked at his right; his view was blocked. Sasuke didn't answer. All the attention was shifted to the front door when a loud crash was heard. There were sighs.

"Sheesh, it's not even his class but he still comes here every goddamned day." A girl scratched the back of her head as she huffed, looking at the blonde pick up the table that had toppled over.

The boy looked up and grinned, greeting his friend loudly.

Said friend pushed herself up from behind her seat and walked towards him. "Naruto, would it kill you to keep your voice down and to be more careful?"

"Probably." He beamed.

"By the way, what's with the crowd?"

She hadn't the chance to answer before he squeezed his way through the people.

"Yo peeps, what's-…" he stopped midway when he saw the raven-haired boy.

He backed away slowly at first but later started running for no apparent reason out of the classroom, Sakura chased after him shouting his name.

The awkward silence was short-lived, having resumed the loud chatter it displayed previously.

* * *

"Naruto!" She shouted and was surprised when he had actually stopped in his tracks. She walked slowly to him, taking her time to catch her breath. His unsteady breathing could be heard as she got closer.

"Naruto?" Hearing no reply, she repeated herself, firmer the second time.

"Yea?" he said simply when he had finally responded.

"What happened just now?"

He exhaled loudly.

"I don't know. Shock I guess." He shrugged.

Sakura laughed and he asked why she hadn't felt the same.

"Oh, Tsunade called me yesterday and told me about it. Also he's from my class, so even if I were shocked, you wouldn't know."

"Makes sense…but why did she call you just to tell you that? Oh! Maybe she does like you more than a student!" Sakura smiled slightly, happy that he had resumed his usual way of speech.

"No you goon, she asked us to show Sasuke around the school."

"Huh?" He shouted, unable to catch her statement.

Sakura took a deep breath, leaned against the wall and spoke. "I said, she phoned my house yesterday, and asked if we could show Sasuke around the school."

"Oh no…I can't do that. You saw me with him just now, I practically freaked!" Naruto raised his voice accidentally.

"You were just shy from seeing him the first time."

"You'll be fine later on." Sakura looked at the boy.

He folded his arms and pouted.

"Well, fine. But I'm going to have to leave early. My godfather wants me to help him with some stuff."

"Great. But what kind of stuff?"

"You don't want to know."

* * *

"And here's the Physics lab, the Chemistry lab and Biology lab are in the same position, only they're on different levels. Chemistry being on the first and Biology on the third."

He watched her with leveled eyes as she pointed to the various rooms and gave short descriptions of each. He wondered when she had become such eloquent a speaker.

"Hey Sakura, remember how Kiba's uniform caught fire in Junior High when we doing that experiment?" Naruto asked enthusiastically.

She squinted her eyes, "You were his lab partner, and the fire started because you forgot to switch off the bunsen burner."

He digressed by whistling an arbitrary tune and she hit his back in return. They laughed loudly together. It had seemed like a cliché scene in movies he mused. The kind of movies he had always avoided. Despite that, he watched on, wondering harmlessly if they'd even realize it if he had left.

There was a soft click when he stopped walking; he felt tired. Sighing with both eyes closed, they bolted open in alarm when she had grabbed his arm.

"Hey Sasuke! Look!" Her free hand pointed over the railing.

"Can you see it? The kids playing tag down there!" Sakura shouted ecstatically as she shook his arms.

It was Konoha Elementary he noted, where they had gone to school together and been in the same class in their final year. He felt the grip on his arm loosen when he heard a shout.

"Naruto! Over here!" Her arm was still hooked around his as she beckoned for the blonde. He saw him stumbling over to where he and the girl stood.

"You ran off without me! What's the rush?"

"That!" She beamed, pointing to the lower floor again. Sasuke watched the boy's expression change; from surprise to realization, and from realization to contentment.

"Makes you want to go back to old times huh?" She whispered fondly as he felt her weight shift onto him. Naruto replied positively, both his arms resting on the railing as his eyes followed the movement of the ant-sized figures. The nostalgic ambience lasted for a moment they had found too brief, having been cut short by a series of annoying beeps.

The blonde exclaimed loudly upon seeing the pixelated numbers on his cell phone and took leave after the addition of the possible consequences if he hadn't. He waved at the girl while running off hurriedly. She waved back and noticed that her arm still hooked around Sasuke's. Having dropped his hand immediately, she had laughed awkwardly and attributed it to being "a spur of the moment thing".

"Well, it's no fun if it's just the two of us, how 'bout we continue the tour of the school tomorrow?" He muttered something unintelligible in response.

"Pardon?" she asked, having not heard a word.

He dismissed the previous statement, adding on shortly after that he had wanted to get the matter done quickly, she complied.

"Just let me buy something from the vending machine first."

He just looked at her smiling face and followed after her slowly.

* * *

She threw a bottle in his direction, having bought it with the thought of him being thirsty. He drank a little and placed it beside him. Admittedly, he enjoyed watching the various ongoing clubs play their own sports as he sat by the pavement. In a while her voice had drifted into his ears and he reached for the bottle, his hand swiped right past it. He got it on his second try. Grateful that she hadn't noticed anything peculiar, he pushed himself up.

* * *

"Well, we're done. I should get going now; my parents don't like me to go home too late." Sakura laughed when they were at the school gate.

"I'll see you tomorrow then." Just as she had turned around, her hand was suddenly held with another's.

"What are you…doing…?" Her voice had trailed off slowly, just as his hand did, brushing fingers against hers. She hadn't felt surprised as much as she had found it odd. Having already walked a fair distance away, she shouted in question of the gesture and the metallic object it had left behind. His silhouette turned around and raised the bottle of water in reply; blinding her eyes for a split second before he dropped his hand and let it hang by his side.

She smiled, threw the coin up in the air and caught it, repeating the process until she was at home where she placed it on her bedroom table.

* * *

"So you were left alone, with him, in school, alone?" The blonde breathed into the receiver.

"Ino," She sighed.

"you're putting your punctuation where they aren't even necessary and your vocabulary is repetitive. Also, he was a normal transfer student."

"Yeah right, I went to your classroom after school today to catch a glimpse of the rumored bishie only to hear Naruto scream that some famous actor was outside our school and see you running out with said bishie. I bet something's up." She accused on the other line.

Sakura replied in an almost sing-song manner, "Repetitive vocabulary…"

"And seriously," her tone dropped considerably. "bishie? You're going mental. But I can't argue with you on that last part though, that was our plan to get rid of all the fangirls who literally built a wall around the guy, and since I can't do the "omg!" squeal as well as Naruto, I took the other job."

"Which included running out of the room hand-in-hand with some good-looking bastard." She added on suggestively.

"Yeah sure, I'd much rather drag him out by his necktie and strangle him in the process. And Ino, I'll hang up right now if you continue dissecting everything I do and link it to me liking him." She warned.

"God fine you bitch." She cursed and dropped her playful tone.

"But what do you think he did all the way at Otogakure after he left with that pedo?"

Sakura took a while to answer. "First off, if he really is a pedo, then I'd rather not."

"…point taken." She agreed.

"But for a hottie, he was pretty unlucky as a child huh? I mean, first there was the whole 'only sibling massacring the whole family but left him alive' thing and then the entire 'prime suspect getting away scot-free due to lack of evidence' shit and even later, he gets coaxed into following some random old guy all the way to Otogakure just cause he claimed to know where his brother was." There was a short pause before she continued.

"Okay, the last one was just him being pure stupid, but you can forgive him for that since he's hot." She shrugged on the other line.

Sakura squinted her eyes as she spoke, "You, are the most shallow person I have ever met."

"Oh! And I put punctuation in the wrong places?" She exclaimed.

"That too."

"I didn't mean it li-…Freak it, you'll just use everything I say against me."

Her friend laughed at the other line.

"But fun's fun Sakura. When will you tell me what happened that night he left?"

There was no answer, just still silence.

"Your mum told me that you went out late that night and didn't return until the next morning. And frankly, it's like you've changed since that day."

"I need to know what happened to you." She pressed on.

"Sakura?"

Hearing nothing, Ino added on, probably panicking a bit. "You know what? It's cool if you don't tell me, I was just cra-" she heard her breathe deeply. She repeated her name questioningly.

"I told him I loved him…" She started grimly. "And that we could spend the rest of our lives happily in mars with our illegitimate children. I later fainted out of the sheer thought of it." All that being said in a serious tone.

Ino shouted at first out of concern and pure bewilderment, but when she had caught the gist of her friend's lie, she cursed at her.

* * *

Like a cascade, the droplets spilled down on his back. He wished that they'd sting him, just a little wakeup call that he wasn't dreaming, just a little reminder that everything that had happened today had been reality. Just a little something to reassure him that he had been treated the same by his erstwhile friends, except  
maybe one. Turning the knob, he reached for his towel.

Fresh from the shower, he was clad in a pair of loose pants and a plain t-shirt. He gave his neck an absent wipe of the towel before stretching his free arm out for  
the bottle; he got annoyed when all he had caught was air. Giving up, he huffed and let himself slump onto the wooden floor sprawled with clothes.

Leaning against the wall with closed eyes, he breathed deeply. The smell of blood was gone.

* * *

That night, she had slept lighter than she had wanted to. Her dream dancing between the thin line of reality and fantasy. She had gone back in time, back to Konoha Elementary with the two boys. She saw their younger selves shouting names and making faces at the other as they ran around the school. It surprised her a bit to find herself suddenly encased inside what had appeared to be glass as she looked through to the other side. She spotted her 12 year old self laughing along side Naruto as the scenery behind them faded to their high school. Sasuke stood close to them in a pool of crimson. Cool and collected, he hadn't struggled one bit as he sank slowly into the blood, only looking blankly before him. His short hair grew at an unbelievable pace, floating up after he had disappeared; they meshed together in a haunting work of art before swirling downwards. Several air bubbles surfaced in succession. First in crescendo then diminuendo before stopping completely. A white object shot up. It bobbed around for a while before coming to a standstill on the dense liquid. Sakura pressed against the imaginary barrier in an attempt to make out what the object was. It was an eyeball.

* * *

mega wonky yo. idontevenknowwhatkindacrapsummaryiwrotemightchangelaterkthxbye.


End file.
